* Posts by Twanky

630 publicly visible posts • joined 17 May 2017

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Shanghai lockdowns to end, perhaps easing tech supply chain woes

Twanky

...news of the sudden surge in new COVID cases in Shanghai

That 'news' will be as unbelievable as this week's and the last few years' news about how their lockdown was suppressing cases.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

Twanky
Devil

Hooray! The lockdowns are ending...

So we can go back to rebuilding our economies relying on manufacturers who can pull the plug on a whim.

Declassified and released: More secret files on US govt's emergency doomsday powers

Twanky
Mushroom

WWIII

Not sure if this is a real quote. but:

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

Attributed to Albert Einstein https://cdn.quotesgram.com/img/27/90/624908764-albert-einstein-physicist-i-know-not-with-what-weapons-world-war-iii-will-be-fought.jpg

Twanky
Pint

Re: Presumbly the UK has similar plans

Spot on.

A question in my mind is did they deploy the Ebola plan or the 'Flu plan?

Twanky

Re: Presumbly the UK has similar plans

I expect the UK (and most other countries) has some interesting boilerplate draft legislation held in standby by the civil service. The question in my mind is do the ministers get an adequate briefing on what's available in case of emergency - and the implications if they try to deploy it?

Twanky

Re: Presumbly the UK has similar plans

The Coronavirus Act 2020 was ready to go suspiciously quickly - I suspect there are boilerplates.

It was being implemented before reaching Royal Assent ie before it became law.

For even faster responses we don't really need any additional 'orders'. Instructing the armed forces to assist the police to 'keep the Queen's peace' has been done before in parts of the UK. Not having a pesky written constitution (sorry, Constitution) makes it easier to do.

Lonestar plans to put datacenters in the Moon's lava tubes

Twanky

Re: RE: Simple question: if knowledge is so completely lost...

Would that be the cats herding the ducks or the puppies herding the ducks?

Neither would be as difficult as herding cats.

Eh? Wassat? Heard of cats? Of course I've heard of cats!

*...I dunno, kids today...*

Twanky
Trollface

Re: RE: Simple question: if knowledge is so completely lost...

Cat videos? Nonsense! Puppy videos every time.

*Ducks and runs for cover.*

D-Wave deploys first US-based Advantage quantum system

Twanky

Re: SPCA is investigating D-Wave

The rumours are both true and false - until you examine them.

OpenVMS on x86-64 reaches production status with v9.2

Twanky

Re: Aah, the memories...

Pathworks??

Nooooooo!

Microsoft partners balk at new licensing scheme, dent growth

Twanky

Both?

This change is super good for both the partners, the customers, and Microsoft long term

Both? I count three supposed beneficiaries. Is that what makes it 'super good'?

Twanky
Childcatcher

Re: Let me see now

IIRC with MS, annual support costs are typically 25-33% of the perpetual licence costs - not 2%. We then get 'support' and upgrade 'rights' when a new version comes out - though usually they'll move useful features to the next grade up so you'll have to upgrade from 'pro' to 'pro-plus' or some such bollocks.

Whatever happens they'll stick us for more money each year until we get off the damn treadmill.

Their brilliant licencing move was the 'no-downgrade' rule - so we can't buy a perpetual licence for a newer version for new staff and then run the (less capable) older version to remain compatible with colleagues.

icon: Would you like a sweetie?

Google Docs' AI-powered inclusive writing auto-correct now under fire

Twanky

we can solve all of those issues

"We've got some issues. We've got to solve ethics. We've got to make sure that all of the mistakes of the past don't repeat themselves. We have got to understand the life science of AI. Otherwise we are going to create a monster. I am really optimistic that if we pay attention, we can solve all of those issues," he said.

Hubris.

Putin reaches for nuclear option: Zuckerberg banned

Twanky
Go

Re: I know, right?

Zuckerberg might actually be the face of truth in Russia

Ha ha ha ha ha

Google tests battery backups, aims to ditch emergency datacenter diesel

Twanky

In Chile, a new wind farm that Google built in cooperation with power company AES Chile will take Google's first Latin American datacenter over the 80 percent carbon-free energy mark, it said. The solar portion of the project consists of 23 turbines and forms a part of a larger solar/wind portfolio that can generate up to 125 MW of energy.

I doubt the solar portion uses 23 turbines.

Judge dismisses Microsoft's challenges: ValueLicensing case to proceed in Britain

Twanky

Microsoft is coming under increasing fire for its licensing practices, which are alleged by some companies to be anti-competitive.

I'm shocked, shocked.

Shanghai lockdown: Chinese tech execs warn of supply-chain chaos

Twanky

Re: Get out

Possibly cleaning up the gene pool.

Twanky
Flame

Re: Blame the CCP and Winne the Pooh

So some considerable time after the 'Great Leap Forward' and the 'Cultural Revolution'? Were they part of 'proper' Communism? Is that when they started telling the truth to their people and to the world?

Twanky
Facepalm

Re: Get out

That sounds like an argument for the lockdown rather than against it.

Yup, that's logical.

- We found some cases, order a lockdown.

- It's not working, cases are rising. We need a tighter lockdown.

- It's still not working, cases are still rising. We need a complete curfew and to deliver rations to the people.

- Cases are still rising. Extend the lockdown.

Ummm...

Twanky

Re: Get out

Look at the 'Total Coronavirus Deaths in China' chart on the linked page:

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/china/

It's bullshit, of course.

Official statistics from China have long been unbelievable. It's obvious that they don't care if the rest of the world believes them or not.

It's significant that the Imperial College London COVID-19 Response Team extolled China's figures in this report published 8 June 2020.

In China, strict movement restrictions and other measures (including case isolation and quarantine) began to be introduced from 23 January 2020, which achieved a downward trend in the number of confirmed new cases during February and resulted in zero new confirmed indigenous cases in Wuhan by 19 March 2020.

Twanky

It's called vendor lock-in and is best avoided. It does cost you a bit more to avoid though - at least in the short term.

COVID-19 contact tracing apps were suggested as saviors. They sometimes delivered

Twanky

In England and Wales in 2020, suicide and homicide did not significantly increase compared with previous years according to ONS. Annual data on cause of death for 2021 has not yet been released (probably will be in July 2022).

Where can we download the data for USA?

Twanky

Re: Turn Bluetooth off...

No. Sharks don't like ice cream. That's why they attack.

Twanky

Re: Time travel - missed opportunity

So it's possible that the contact tracing app in Singapore "may have contributed to Singapore's success in squashing its early waves." but you somehow "know a similar app here in NZ helped us for over a year".

I would believe that with some good analysis to back it up.

Twanky

Re: Statistics are tricky

Thank you for checking.

I've so far checked UK, Belgium, Sweden, Denmark by calculating annual age-standardised mortality rates from death and population data downloaded from HMD (using the European Standard Population 2013 age standardisation). In each case a long period (50 years or more) of declining (improving) mortality rate seems to be levelling off at around 1000 (1% of the population dying each year) with a spike in 2020 which compares with the rate 8-12 years previously. Other countries had not (last time I checked - a few months ago now) released 2020 data to HMD - or HMD had not published it for some reason. I'm looking forward to USA releasing its 2020 stats to HMD.

The remaining question is whether 2020 (and later) would have been worse without contact tracing, curfews, isolation etc - but there's almost no good empirical evidence as there's no 'control' data to compare against.

Twanky
Pint

Skál!

Twanky

Thanks for the link - though it's not precisely the same: p-scores are a variation on standard deviations which effectively show how unusual a peak is (2020/21 was certainly unusual). I was looking at the long(er) term trends to set the expectation against which to measure the excess.

Sweden 2020: worst mortality rate for 8 years.

Twanky

I'm sure the date is not a mistake. Apple built the tracking ability into iOS to suit their own purposes. They were then in a position to say: Look! isn't this useful? - and then get support to develop it further.

Twanky

Please download the spreadsheet associated with this FoI response:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/adhocs/12735annualdeathsandmortalityrates1938to2020provisional

Then plot the age-standardised mortality rate from 1942-2020 (note that the data given is 'provisional')..

2020: Worst mortality rate for 12 years in England and Wales.

There may be similar data available for your country at https://www.mortality.org/ or from your country's statistics agency.

Why the Linux desktop is the best desktop

Twanky

Licensing

IIRC there was a specific clause in the Select and Enterprise licence agreements which prohibited using non-Windows desktops for users. I can't remember the exact wording but essentially we could use non-Windows OSes for 'line of business' applications only. In addition the 'no downgrade' clauses (If you buy an Office 2007 licence you can't run Office 2003 to remain compatible with colleagues) forced us onto the upgrade treadmill. These licence restrictions made it extremely difficult to experiment with alternatives.

UK spy boss warns China hopes Russia will help it take over tech standards

Twanky

I'm not sure which country you're referring to. I think it could apply to most.

Twanky

Re: The hypocrisy is breathtaking ...

the things our governments would loved to have done years ago

Hmm, I think possibly: 'the things our governments blame the previous governments for not doing years ago'.

And no doubt the things the next governments will blame them for not doing.

The first step to data privacy is admitting you have a problem, Google

Twanky

Re: Ethics and business

I agree with your points but I'll quibble over a couple of details:

We never ask how the extortion gang can continue to afford their nice houses when their schemes get shut down, do we?

A better analogy would be drugs gangs. How can they afford to supply the drugs if their operation gets busted?

Not identifying the user to advertisers who then send ads.

I'm pretty sure they're careful not to do this. They want to sell the same information about consumers over and over again.

Fresh concerns about 'indefinite' UK government access to doctors' patient data

Twanky
Facepalm

Re: This data will be sold to USA 'health' businesses

Boris Johnson, American by birth, will do whatever is necessary to cosy up to his home country.

Is that why BoJo renounced his US citizenship in 2015/16?

Unable to write 'Amusing Weekly Column'. Abort, Retry, Fail?

Twanky
Windows

Re: I Wish...

enforced case on the [i]username[/i] as well as on the password.

A former employer used CheckPoint's SecuRemote for remote PC to site VPN access. That used case sensitivity on the username too. We used surnames as usernames which caused endless fun where some users insisted the first few letters of their usernames should be start with 'de' or 'van der' or 'Mc' followed by an uppercase and the rest in lowercase.

Worse than that if you were typing in a password that had a substring of uppercase letters and used the capslock it would throw up a useful warning that you'd turned on capslock - but then consume the next keystroke as acknowledgement of that warning, thus making the password wrong. That one took a hell of a long time to work out.

Are we springing into a Y2K-class nightmare?

Twanky

Pease can Microsoft...

...issue adjustments for their software more than 4 months before the change comes into effect this time?

Russia labels Meta an 'extremist' organization, bans Instagram

Twanky

Two-Facebook.

Ukraine invasion: This may be the quiet before the cyber-storm, IT staff warned

Twanky

Re: Now is the time to be a prepper – the computer security kind

I'm reminded of the joke about the lost traveller asking for directions from a passing local:

'How do I get to insert name of destination?'

'Well, I wouldn't start from here'.

Twanky
Holmes

Now is the time to be a prepper – the computer security kind

No. No it isn't. It's too late.

Trying to bolt on security as an afterthought is always too late. It's also, often, more expensive than doing it right first time.

Singapore introduces potent anti-scam measures

Twanky

Re: "accelerate adoption of – and preference for – mobile banking apps"

Mobile banking apps - no thanks.

I use online banking to pay bills and sometimes to move money from one account to another - like most people, I guess. Unlike many, I use a dedicated minimal desktop VM which I maintain and start when necessary on my Linux laptop. I'm quite pleased that the banks frequently use additional verification because they don't recognise the machine (odd user agent string and no persistent cookies).

Their idea that my Android phone with their banking software loaded alongside whatever else I've decided I want to install from the Play Store is as or more secure than my VM is laughable.

How often do most people need to give new instructions to their bank(s)? Of those occasions, how many are so time critical that they must be done right now - eg while at the pub?

I wonder why they don't load games on the terminals in the few remaining bank branches? I mean, if their software is so secure that it can run alongside *anything* where's the harm?

NASA taps Lockheed Martin to build Mars parcel pickup rocket

Twanky
Pint

Flatbed

Useful analogy, thanks.

Maybe put the motorcycle on the back of the truck too?

'Please download in Microsoft Excel': Meet the tech set to monitor IT performance across central UK government

Twanky
Pint

Yeah true.

I'm reminded of the secretary of someone who asked to be kept informed about the progress of drawing together a budget from multiple departments.

'Every time I copy the total into my report it's gone up!'.

Twanky

Benefit???

If you want less CGI and more real effects in movies, you may get your wish: Inflatable film studio to orbit Earth

Twanky

Breathtaking

Inflatable space station module:

...convey the experience of weightlessness with breathtaking impact,

Didn't anyone else find this phrase disturbing?

Oh, just me then.

Ad blockers altering website code is not a copyright violation, German court rules

Twanky
Mushroom

HTML copyright

The publisher... It claimed that the HTML used to render web pages is protected and thus cannot be altered without the approval of the copyright holder.

So they assert copyright to the HTML as delivered? That surely means they are responsible/liable for everything it does? From this we should assume that near realtime ad bidding cannot be used as they have not created/reviewed or hosted the code that they bundle into their pages.

If they successfully claim copyright then hit them for *all* undesired effects of their code on your computer.

Epoch-alypse now: BBC iPlayer flaunts 2038 cutoff date, gives infrastructure game away

Twanky

Re: Y2K minor point

"Y2K was caused by programmers saving space by storing years as two digits"

If year (numbers) were stored as two digits (two bytes) then we'd be OK from the year 32766 BC to the year 32767 (assuming they didn't use unsigned 'word' values). The problem is they used a two character representation which could then be fairly easily converted to a single byte number for arithmetic. Seems daft now but simply concatenating strings to represent dates seemed a great idea.

How were the pension companies (for example) dealing with their calculations for men born post 1935 who would be expected to retire in 2000 or later (age 65, in the UK)?

Meta Platforms demands staffers provide proof of COVID-19 booster vaccine before returning to office

Twanky

Re: Good.

ONS use a 5-year average comparison for their weekly figures. For 2021 they've used an average based on 2015-2019 because 2020 was unusual.

If we try to draw a trend based on 2015-2019 we get:

Comparing with 5-year trend (2015-2019):

deaths = year x -850 + 2,247,104

Differences from 5-year trend:

2010: -45,438

2011: -53,363

2012: -40,288

2013: -32,389

2014: -37,504

2015: 4,653

2016: -9,030

2017: 471

2018: 7,536

2019: -3,630

2020: 84,010

2021: 56,645

2020+2021 total difference from 5-year trend: 140,655 deaths above trend (Diagnosed Covid deaths still seem 11% overstated).

A problem with using this trend: For 2010 to 2014 we have nearly 209,000 deaths below trend.

Pick a trend, any trend... Now justify your choice.

Twanky

Re: Good.

So far in the UK alone we have >150,000 dead.

England and Wales from https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/datasets/weeklyprovisionalfiguresondeathsregisteredinenglandandwales. I consider ONS to be a more reliable source of information than the Government dashboard.

Covid deaths (Covid mentioned on death certificate):

2020: 86,240

2021: 73,315

Total: 159,555

Any cause Deaths:

2010: 493,166

2011: 484,391

2012: 496,616

2013: 503,665

2014: 497,700

2015: 539,007

2016: 524,474

2017: 533,125

2018: 539,340

2019: 527,324

2020: 614,114

2021: 585,899

Comparing with 12-year trend (2010-2021): deaths = year x 9,345 -18,306,422

Differences from 12-year trend:

2010: 16,328

2011: -1,792

2012: 1,088

2013: -1,208

2014: -16,518

2015: 15,444

2016: -8,434

2017: -9,127

2018: -12,257

2019: -33,618

2020: 43,827

2021: 6,267

2020+2021 total difference from 12-year trend: 50,094 deaths

Comparing with 10-year trend (2010-2019) - ie excluding 2020 and 2021 as 'unusual': deaths = year x 5,929 -11,430,810

Differences from 10-year trend:

2010: 5,967

2011: -8,737

2012:-2,441

2013: -1,322

2014: -13,216

2015: 22,162

2016: 1,699

2017: 4,421

2018: 4,706

2019: -13,239

2020: 67,622

2021: 33,477

2020+2021 total difference from 10-year trend: 101,099 deaths

Even assuming the most extreme trend (based on 2010-2019) diagnosed Covid deaths seem overstated by about 57%.

Accepting trend (based on 2010-2021, ie all available data) diagnosed Covid deaths seem overstated by about 200%

Note that 2015 was a bad year though obviously not as bad as 2020. There was a distinct epidemic (probably 'flu) spanning Jan-Mar 2015. 2014 was an unusually benign year.

Note that 2019 was an unusually low year too. If we define our trend line as 2010-2018 (ie exclude 2019, 2020 and 2021 as 'unusual' years) we see this:

Comparing with 9-year trend (2010-2018): deaths = year x 7,033 -13,651,269

Differences from 9-year trend:

2010: 8,909

2011: -6,898

2012: -1,706

2013: -1,690

2014: -14,687

2015: 19,587

2016: -1,978

2017: -360

2018: -1,178

2019: -20,226

2020: 59,531

2021: 24,284

2020+2021 total difference from 9-year trend: 83,815 (Diagnosed Covid deaths seem 90% overstated).

Which years do you think should be included/excluded from any trend calculations?

Note that no age-standardisation has been applied to adjust for population changes/aging.

Feeling virtuous with a good old paperback? Well, don't. Switching to traditional media does not improve mood

Twanky

Study hopes to take the elitism out media consumption

Erm. The 'study', such as it is, should report its findings. If it hopes to do anything other than test an hypothesis it's a crap study.

A fifth of England's NHS trusts are mostly paper-based as they grapple with COVID backlog, warn MPs

Twanky

...to ensure technology helps improve productivity...

Does this mean that only technological improvements should be considered? It sounds like introducing tech is seen as the goal, not just a tool.

The next question is: whose productivity? Helping to stop medics wasting their time and enabling them to concentrate on patients' needs would be a good start.

Of course, what we'll end up with is a new method of measuring productivity with which the management consultants will show that 'the new system' has increased performance ten-fold against metrics that have never been measured before.

Power to the medics!

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